A brief history of... haute cuisine

Tom Aitkens deserves a special place in the history of British haute cuisine. Not because he works in the French tradition, though undoubtedly he does. Nor because, in 1999, he became Britain's youngest holder of two Michelin stars aged just 26, at London's Pied à Terre. Nor even because of his famously fiery temper, which caused him to depart that restaurant after a furious row with one of his brigade. No. His place in history is reserved on account of what he did after the row: he went to work as Lord Lloyd Webber's private chef.

Put aside the grievous crime of doing anything which might keep Andrew Lloyd Webber alive, happy and able to compose. What is intriguing about Aitkens's willingness to accept the patronage of the noble Lord is how much of a piece this is within the entire 200-year history of haute cuisine in this country. In France the grand gastronomic tradition was the logical extension of a food culture that grew from the bottom up; from the notion of le terroir which every Frenchman holds dear, and the ripe produce it provides.

In this country any haute cuisine tradition that exists is almost solely because of the appetites and conspicuous consumption of the British nobility, hereditary or otherwise. In other words, it came from the top down. Certainly without them there would have been no Gordon Ramsay, no Marco Pierre White and, by extension, no Tom Aitkens. The story begins in 1815 with the appointment by the then Prince Regent of the great Antonin Carême to be the chef at his ornate pavilion in Brighton. The Regent, later King George IV, was, depending on your point of view, either the first great British foodie or the first disgusting British glutton. He would arrange 100-course banquets for lunch and then do it all again for dinner. And for lunch and dinner the next day and the day after.

Carême, now regarded as the founder of French gastronomy, suited him perfectly. He was famous not just for the richness of his dishes and their number but for his extraordinary decorative centrepieces, moulded from sugar or pork fat or marzipan; ludicrous fantasies of miniature palaces and forts and windmills. He also wrote the defining texts of nineteenth century French cookery.

Though he stayed only two years before moving on to the court of the Tsar, he and the Prince had set a trend. Banquets were now a mark of wealth and excess and the only chef that would do was a French one. The extent of his influence can be seen in the pages of a book called London at Table, published in 1851 and probably Britain's first ever restaurant guide. In it there is a description of the Wellington, a restaurant on London's Piccadilly with two kitchens. One is ruled by a British chef. The other is controlled by 'one of the cleverest and most accomplished artistes that Paris can produce'. The French menus at the Wellington, which included consommés, mayonnaise de homard and filets de boeuf sauce poivrade, would remain (depressingly) familiar for more than a century to come.

The arrival in 1890 at London's newly opened Savoy Hotel of Auguste Escoffier, the so-called 'chef of kings and king of chefs', underlined the dominance of the French in Britain's kitchens. In partnership with César Ritz, the greatest hotelier of his generation, Escoffier essentially became house chef to London's nobility including, once more, the eldest son of the monarch.

We would probably like to imagine that Britain was a terribly different place by the middle of the twentieth century, but it wasn't, not really. In 1959 a young French chef arrived from the British Embassy in Paris to cook for the renowned Cazalet family in Kent. Four years later his brother arrived in London to work for the Rothschilds. Their names were Albert and Michel Roux and, without the contacts provided by their years in service to the aristocracy and hard cash from the Cazalets, they would never have been able, in 1967, to open Le Gavroche. Which in turn means Pierre Koffman and Rowley Leigh, Gordon Ramsay, Marcus Wareing and Marco Pierre White would never have received the training that has enabled them to create and maintain the increasingly vibrant British restaurant scene that exists today.

And now comes Tom Aitkens who, in April, will open his own modern French restaurant and who, like the Rouxs before him, waited out his time in service to the British nobility. He may not like to admit that he's working in a tradition that began, almost 200 years before, with a man famous for carving palaces out of lard. But then he'd also probably prefer people didn't know he made his living for a while from the man who wrote the music to Aspects of Love .

About this article

A brief history of... haute cuisine

This article appeared on p57 of the Observer Food Monthly section of the Observer
on Saturday 8 March 2003.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 11.33 EST on Sunday 9 March 2003.
It was last modified at 11.33 EST on Thursday 3 November 2005.
It was first published at 11.33 EST on Thursday 3 November 2005.